ART FOR CHANGE and Prospect Park Alliance present Park of Dreams, a public art exhibition featuring larger-than-life work by leading New York-based contemporary artists, on view now through Spring 2024. Included in this exhibition is Brooklyn-based artist Amy Lincoln.
Drawing on three prevailing genres of oil painting—landscape, still life, and portraiture—and working with a distinct color palette, Amy Lincoln employs a visual vocabulary that unsettles any clear-cut category. Her uncanny use of bold and unnatural colors and highly manicured style, evocative of Henri Rousseau’s vivid jungles, instills a discomfiting quality in otherwise idyllic settings, which include scenic deserts and verdant forests. Her paintings strive to create an exotic sense of the natural world. “I think my paintings are a whole lot more controlled and manicured than nature really is,” Lincoln has said. “I try to convey the structure of a plant, not to represent it realistically.”
Amy Lincoln’s Trees and Moon Rays (Blue, Cyan and Magenta) is available for purchase at artforchange.com, with 5% of the purchase price, up to $15,000, of each limited edition print sold being donated to the Prospect Park Alliance. In keeping with all ART FOR CHANGE releases, artists will receive 50% of the net proceeds from each print sale.
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Trees and Moon Rays (Blue, Cyan and Magenta) is a graphic rendition of the titular objects, with radiant light beaming towards the leaves and tree trunks that spread across a horizonless landscape. Gradient tones of blues, purples, and pinks denote the contrast between light and shadow, forming a dynamic image that feels simultaneously figurative and abstract. The work derives from Lincoln’s recent foray into Photoshop, which is used to design images that line up with her painting practice. During the creative process of Sun and Trees, the artist decided to shift the hues, in her own words, “from a sunny daytime scene to a more otherworldly, moonlit night scene.” For this edition, she will additionally hand-embellish each print by adding various new details.
On her participation in the exhibition, Lincoln notes: “I love the idea of supporting Prospect Park. Living in an urban environment, without being able to connect to the natural world, can really wear on you. Spaces like Prospect Park allow us New Yorkers to have the best of both worlds.”
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Recently, Amy Lincoln spoke with Robb Report journalist Julie Belcove as she prepared for her solo show at Sperone Westwater. Inspired by her childhood spent in Portland, Oregon, Lincoln notes that “weird” shades that “push each other around” are what she aims for. The goal, she says, is to have the works “be worlds [that are] distinct from our world.” When Lincoln began making seascapes in 2019, she had simplified her style to a minimalistic practice. The artist now mostly incorporates “a symbol of a cloud or a symbol of a wave,” reading almost like shorthand.
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